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Star Fox 2 is a video game in the Star Fox series. It was originally slated to be released for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, directly proceeding the first Star Fox in 1993. Argonaut Software and Nintendo co-developed the game, and it was planned to utilize an improved Super FX chip; however, the game was canceled in mid-1995 by Shigeru Miyamoto due to the impending release of the Nintendo 64 and the desire to use the most advanced system available for a new Star Fox game. The game remained officially unreleased for over 22 years, until June 26, 2017. It is worth noting that Nintendo never had plans to release the game at all, and only released the game because the producers of the Super NES Classic Edition demanded it. [1]

Contents

Release History

Before the official release, there were multiple unofficial releases, compiled from leaked source code.

In 1999, an early technical demo of the game was leaked onto the internet. It is the earliest known build of StarFox 2 in existence. The demo included a two-player versus mode (which was later dropped), as well as Fara Phoenix as a playable character (who was also dropped).[2]

In 2002, the source code of a fully playable, very late development prototype of the game was leaked onto the internet.[3] After the code was successfully compiled on October 17th, 2004, Aeon Genesis translated the game into English and created a 1.00 patch that removed the game's remaining debugging features. This build shares many features with the final game released in 2017.[4]

Plot

Star Fox 2 takes place in the Lylat system some time after the events of Star Fox. Emperor Andross, having survived his defeat at the hands of the Star Fox mercenaries in the first game, has returned with a rebuilt space armada and a new floating stronghold called Astropolis. He has also hired the Star Wolf wing and their unique fighters as a countermeasure against Star Fox.

With his renewed power, Andross launches an all-out offensive against the Lylat system, capturing planets along the way and converting them into war factories (including his former base, Venom, which has been terraformed into a livable world since his previous invasion). General Pepper once again requests the services of the Star Fox mercenaries, which has expanded from their original roster of Fox, Falco, Slippy, and Peppy, to include the new recruits Miyu and Fay. They also have more and better equipment, including new specialized and transformable Arwings, and a Mothership to repair and resupply them. The team sets out to defend Corneria by defeating Andross's forces before they can inflict critical damage on the planet. The ultimate goal is to destroy Astropolis.

Gameplay

The Star Fox 2 map.

The gameplay of Star Fox 2 is very different from the original Star Fox. Instead of following linear paths inside predefined missions, the player moves a team of two ships representing the player character and a wing man freely around a map of the Lylat system. When the player's ships make contact with enemy forces, the game will go into an action perspective, piloting the Arwing directly with controls and gameplay similar to the first Star Fox, except with all-range controls and a reticle for chargedlasers - however - unlike their other appearances in the series, charged lasers cannot lock-on from the start. When the player clears the specified objectives in that encounter (for example: destroying all fighters in the vicinity), the game will go back into the main map screen, where the player can select a new destination for their craft.

The objective of the game is to destroy all enemy forces present in the map while defending planet Corneria (located in the lower left corner of the map), preventing its damage level from reaching 100% due to enemy attacks. If Corneria is fully damaged, General Pepper will scream, "Ayaah! It's all over! Corneria is finished!" - which is followed by a cinematic of Cornera's largest city being destroyed by some of Andross fighters while a panicked air traffic controller tries and fails to contact Star Fox. [5] This ends the game immediately.

To assist Corneria, the player will have to intercept fighters and incoming planetary missiles while also dealing with the sources of these attacks: Battle Carriers, which will deploy more fighter squadrons, and enemy bases, which will fire more missiles towards Corneria. To protect Corneria, General Pepper employs an immobile defense system called the Satellite Defense Platform that can shoot down enemies on a limited basis — the player must also defend this installation from special enemy ships called viruses that can take over the satellite, and use its cannon to fire at Corneria.

The Satellite Defense Platform.

If the player's ship makes contact with an occupied planet on the map screen, they will be transported into another action sequence located on the planet's surface. There they will have to open the enemy's base entrance through different means depending on the level (by pressing a switch, defeating a boss, etc.). The option to quickly transform the Arwing into a Walker is suitable for ground navigation. Once the player has been able to gain access to the base interior, they will have to go through a complex and destroy the base's generator at the end. The planet will be then liberated and no more missiles will be fired from it. Starfighters from the Star Wolf wing will be defending some captured planets, and they will have to be fought if the player wants to liberate one of those planets. They eventually go after the player's Arwings when some time has passed. Bosses will also be dispatched to chase the player's ships at some point in the game.

The game runs in semi-real time: when the player takes an action, time starts counting and enemies will perform actions as well. This occurs whether the player is moving around on the map screen or has engaged an enemy in battle, making it possible for enemies to damage Corneria or new enemies to launch during that time. This forces the player to think tactically and defeat their enemies as quick and efficiently as possible. At times the player may even have to leave a battle to take on other enemies that are getting too close to the planet. In this way, Star Fox 2 bears considerable similarity to many real-time strategy games.

Once the player has cleared all enemy forces present on the map, their ships will then travel to Andross' base, located on the top right corner of the map, to face one last level and fight Andross himself at the end of it. Once Andross is defeated, the player has won the game, and their performance will be scored and ranked in a debriefing screen.

Difficulty levels have a great impact on the game, changing the layout of all levels and presenting stronger and more numerous enemy forces on each successive difficulty level. Each difficulty level also contains "Mysterious Medals" (dubbed "Pepper Coins" by fans), which will be hidden inside the game's levels for the player to find and collect. [6] Once all of the medals are collected, a Secret Base containing multiple extremely useful power ups (including the charged lasers lock-on ability) is unlocked.

Characters and setting

Title screen showing all of the main characters.

As other games in the series, Star Fox 2 takes place in the Lylat system. During the course of the game, the Star Fox team gradually penetrates the defense of Andross's forces and reaches his floating base, Astropolis.

Most of the main characters in the game have an intensely positive or negative relationship with Fox McCloud and his team, particularly Andross, who was previously defeated by Star Fox. The supporting character Wolf and his Star Wolf wing serve as secondary antagonists throughout the game. Most of these characters have reappeared in later games in the series, such as Star Fox 64 or Star Fox Assault, and also in other franchises, such as Super Smash Bros. Like it's predecessor, this game features some clips of voice acting, most of which were provided by British voice actress Nathalie Cox.

Development and initial cancellation

Placeholder SNES box art.

The game's title was also written as Star Fox II during development, and was extensively covered by the various gaming magazines of the time, both at its one E3 appearance as well as in the many screenshots provided by Nintendo to generate interest in the sequel. It's likely that a promotion video was put together at the time, though no copies of it have ever been made public. Since the leaking of the incomplete code between May and September of 1999, individuals have managed to take and compile a variety of screen-grabs using emulation tools. The lack of media coverage about the compiled prototypes may be due to a fear of legal action from either NCL or NOA. Early in development, Andross or a look-alike (called "Saru", Japanese for a monkey or ape) and Fara Phoenix from the Star Fox comic (known as "Lady") were in place of Miyu and Fay. A sheep character was also designed for the game, but was replaced by Fay before the final version.

On the Internet, ROM images exist of a very early tech demo of the game, which was originally shown at trade shows. This ROM is particularly notable for having a rudimentary multiplayer mode, which programmer Dylan Cuthbert later clarified was cut during development because the screen size was too small to be fun, resulting in more focus being placed on single player than originally planned. Another ROM, compiled from the latest known source code before the project was canceled, was released in August 2002 by an anonymous Nintendo employee — this version is nearly complete and contains minor bugs and debug code. These ROMs can be played using a SNES emulator. Additionally, a fan-made patch is in circulation for the near-final ROM — this fixes most of the bugs, removes the debug code and the unfinished features, and translates the game's dialog into English. When asked about whether or not the game would be released on the Wii's Virtual Console or the Nintendo DS, Star Fox designer Takaya Imamura said "Probably not."

While Nintendo never disclosed the official reason for its cancellation, Dylan Cuthbert shared his thoughts:

“Starfox 2 was fully completed. I was lead programmer and whilst Giles made Stunt Race FX, myself and the rest of the original Starfox team (ie. Nintendo's artists and designers) expanded Starfox into a full 3D shooting game. We used state-of-the-art technology such as arbitrary plane clipping (which has only been seen recently in such games as Crash Bandicoot 2 & 3) to create some rather spectacular effects. (for the time)...The reason for non-release was the then impending Nintendo-64 which of course was intended to be released a lot sooner than it actually was. Miyamoto-san decided he wanted to have a clean break between 3D games on the SNES and 3D games on the new superior 64 bit system. In retrospect, he could have released Star Fox 2 and there would have been over a year and a half before the N64 came out. But hindsight is always 20/20.”

—Dylan Cutbert

The staff members of IGN suggested that high production costs and internal development problems also contributed to its cancellation.

According to Dylan Cuthbert, some programming elements done for the game, such as the camera programs, were adapted and reused for the development of Super Mario 64. Shigeru Miyamoto also stated that ideas such as All-Range Mode, multiplayer, and Star Wolf scenarios came from Star Fox 2. He estimated that 30% of Star Fox 64 came from Star Fox 2. Additionally, several game concepts have been reused in Star Fox Command for the Nintendo DS — among these are the map screen gameplay element and the ability to choose from multiple characters, each with their own fighters and statistics. The concept of the Arwing transforming into a Walker was reused in Star Fox Zero. Furthermore, Miyu's flirtatious attitude was given to Katt Monroe.

Availability

This game, in varying stages of development, is available in ROM form on the Internet, although in most countries it is considered illegal to possess without direct permission from Nintendo due to still technically being copyrighted material. Nintendo has made no attempt to remove the distribution of the ROM.

Most ROMs available are in Japanese, though an English fan-translation exists. A version with an official translation can be seen in magazine screenshots, but it is unknown if it was archived or scrapped. One unofficial modification has an odd glitch in which pressing select to turn into a Walker when prompted will immediately take the player to the credits, which cannot be skipped.

On May 21, 2015, Dylan Cuthbert interviewed the Nintendo Life website. He stated that, despite canceling Star Fox 2, his team finished the game anyway, and when working on Star Fox Command, received a copy of this master ROM. He also stated that the builds floating online were far from the final product. In addition, he cited nightmarish legal issues with the now-defunct Argonaut Games as a key reason for the lack of official digital releases of games utilizing the Super FX chip up to that point. He has repeated these sentiments on other occasions.

On June 26, 2017, Nintendo made the surprise announcement that Star Fox 2 will finally be included on the Super NES Classic Edition, set for a North American and European release date of September 29, 2017. It will mark the first time the game will be officially released in over two decades, as well as the first time that Super FX games will be re-released since their original Game Pak format. On June 28, 2017, a Nintendo representative speaking to Famitsu claimed that the reason Super FX games weren't on Virtual Console was due to it being unable to properly emulate the chip, leaving Dylan Cuthbert's legal explanation unmentioned.

On August 22, 2017, it was confirmed to USgamer that the Super NES Classic Edition will feature the original master, with Dylan Cuthbert adding that it was given the full QA process during the final few months of post-cancellation in 1996, including the completed English localization from the Japanese iteration used throughout development. Around this time, footage of the final version began to circulate in previews and advertisements.

References in other games and media

Since its original cancellation, several elements of Star Fox 2 were reworked into later titles such as Star Fox 64 and Star Fox Zero.

The All-Range Mode that was developed for Star Fox 2 is introduced in Star Fox 64.

The Star Wolf team debut in the game acting as All-Range Mode enemies.

The Copperhead missiles were based on the Planetary Missiles, even gaining the subtile Interplanetary Cruise Missiles in the 3DS version.

The Bolse satellite was the likely successor to the Astropolis base.

The feline Miyu and her flirtatious behaviour was likely given over to Katt Monroe, while the canine pilot Fay was likely the predecessor to Fox's faithful friend, Bill Grey.

The soundbyte used for the mission screen in Star Fox 64 was reused from the soundbyte used when the player proceeded to launch their Arwings into battle at the start of the game upon selecting the characters.

Andross's in-game boss battle techniques of using hands and telekinesis in the Normal and Hard difficulties were reused in Star Fox 64.

The climax of the game involves the Queen's first form, upon being beaten, retreating down a pit with the player in pursuit, similar to the beginning of the second phase against Andross in Star Fox 2.

In particular, Star Fox Command is sometimes seen as a spiritual successor, borrowing more heavily on the strategic map and multiple ship concepts.

The strategic turn based gameplay that depends on map planning and engaging enemies and missiles that pass towards the Great Fox was borrowed heavily from Star Fox 2.

The Anglar Missiles take the place of the Planetary Missiles.

Dash Bowman's character design resembles Algy, even succumbing to villainy like his grandfather, akin to Algy's allegiance with Andross as part of the Star Wolf wing.

Venom may become terraformed if the followed ending reveals, referencing the radical environmental changes to Venom introduced in Star Fox 2.

The alternative Arwing mode, Walker, appears as an optional transformation for enabling slowed down gameplay suitable for use in more confined areas.

The giant Battle Cruisers were presumably the predecessor to the Salvadora warship appearing in Zero.

Trivia

In the final artwork, Fox clearly wears green as he does in every other game except the first Star Fox, since his promotional puppet wore similar clothing colors as Falco except differentiated with a lighter shade and pink scarf rather than a red one. Miyu also has larger ears lacking her left golden earring, her clothing is recolored, and both she and Fay wear reddish gloves. Andross's image in the background has a visible pupil in his right eye, and the four Arwings flying behind the team exclude Slippy and Peppy's bulky ships. The teams' boot designs have been updated in the general style of other games, while they were originally formfitting. Additionally, the number "2" has a slightly different metallic texture design between the Super NES and Super Famicom-style artwork.